Gestural rhythmicity

Tony Orrico: Penwald: 2: 8 circles (2009)

"The second part of Gesture and Speech is entitled ‘Memory and Rhythms’, and it is above all in Leroi-Gourhan’s attention to the rhythmicity of technical activity, rather than its grounding in social memory, that this counter-argument appears. A great many operations, he observes, entail the regular repetition of certain manual gestures: these include hammering, sawing and scraping. And whether or not the artisan has an idea in mind of the final form of the artefact he is making, the actual form emerges from the pattern of rhythmic movement, not from the idea." (Ingold, 2009, p.438)

Ingold, T. (1999). ‘Tools for the Hand, Language for the Face’: An Appreciation of Leroi-Gourhan’s Gesture and Speech. Studies in the History of Philosophy Biololgy and Biomedical Sciences, 30(4), 411-453.